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sindhu_gangadharan
Participant
Here at SAP, we are as excited as you are about the ever-evolving opportunities offered by the Internet of Things (IoT). That’s why we continue to invest in cutting edge IoT products and services – the results of which we are eager to share with you at SAPPHIRE NOW next week.

Recently we brought you news of SAP Cloud Platform IoT Services, one of the core services running on the SAP Cloud Platform. With IoT services, our customers leverage a myriad of capabilities including connecting remote and sensor devices, fine grain access control over data, and secure integration with existing business processes.

One of the most significant acquisitions SAP recently made was Plat.One, an enterprise grade IoT platform that’s highly scalable and secure. Today, let’s zero in on how the Plat.One integration—which is at the core of SAP Cloud Platform IoT —provides the responsiveness needed to meet customer demands.

Adaptive Architecture
Some of the biggest challenges in IoT remain integration and connectivity. SAP solves these with best in class technologies that integrate and connect devices from the edge—where the devices reside—to the core of business enterprise.

Our comprehensive device connectivity management capabilities are supported over a wide number of industry machines and messaging protocols. Behind the scenes, we follow a microservices-based adaptive architecture, allowing us to run both large devices and small at the edge—all on the cloud. It’s about making sure we integrate into any device or sensor, no matter what protocols the scenario demands.

This adaptive architecture is also necessary when devices need to run disconnected from the cloud for periods of time. Whether that means a remote device in areas with low connectivity, or a need to perform data analytics at the edge without sending all data into the cloud, IoT Services 4.0 can meet these demands. Capabilities include data buffering on a device when not connected to the cloud, and guaranteed delivery of data between the edge and the cloud.

Device Management
When it comes to IoT, we need to work with complex machines and thousands of sensors. Device management is key, and this includes everything from onboarding to the decommissioning of devices.

What’s unique about our offering is the understanding that this process must encompass the entire life cycle for a variety of devices in a highly secure and scalable manner. Our device management capabilities include semi-automated to automated means for onboarding, as well as supporting certificate based authentication of devices at multiple points.

We’re able to normalize the underlying data protocols to provide seamless, reciprocal communication between the devices and the core data center.

Rules
When dealing with something this massive, integrated management of the IoT ecosystem is needed at multiple levels. Our rules engine allows customers to define and execute both complex and low level granular rules at the edge and on the cloud.

Customers can quickly define, manage and extend rules to identify when threshold values are exceeded and send a trigger alert. In other cases, rules can be combined with machine learning algorithms that allow for not just a timely response, but also a self-healing mechanism to fix internal performance and/or system failures without the need for human interaction.

The combination of machine learning and our sophisticated rules engine is moving the needle for the future of IoT—providing predictive solution options for any number of use case scenarios.

Customer Approved
The variety of use case solutions is fascinating, and we’re seeing that in action in the SAP Cloud Platform IoT Services 4.0 beta program. The program includes several satisfied customers but let me tell you about just one: Mitsubishi Electric Europe.

 

Mitsubishi Electric recently featured a robot with over 100 sensor data points seamlessly connected to the SAP Cloud Platform which, combined with our IoT services, allows for customized dashboards, predictive maintenance and analytics functions. Multiple controllers on the robot display and communicate information based on defined rules. As an example, if a belt is broken on the robot, a maintenance request is triggered automatically on the back-end. The robot also displays the ability to track machine performance, requests for spare parts, and field services support.

 

According to Thomas Lantermann, a Senior Solution Consultant at Mitsublishi Electric, “With the help of SAP Cloud Platform 4.0 we can onboard and manage our SPS Robots from Mitsubishi Electric in a fast and efficient way. In particular, the immediate visualization of the sensor data without any coding, the secure communication from devices to the cloud and also tight and smooth integration of relevant data into any backend application via the SAP Cloud Platform are key advantages of the IoT service.”

 

Stay Tuned
The possibilities are endless with the SAP Cloud Platform and IoT Services 4.0. We look forward to sharing more about what IoT Services can do at SAPPHIRE NOW next week. You won’t want to miss it!

https://www.sap.com/community/topic/internet-of-things.html